Water infrastructure as a driver of regionalization in the Ruhr, Germany

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that infrastructuring can be a driver of regionalization. Referring to the case of the Ruhr region in Germany, it shows how regional water governance outpaces other metropolitan governance initiatives in a context of competing regionalizations. The explanation for this result is strong output legitimacy attributed to the organization being in charge of waste water treatment. The Ruhr region has a long and ongoing history of city-regional collaboration, with regional planning and watershed management being the main functions that have found institutional anchors. In 1899, the Prussian government created the Emschergenossenschaft, an inter-municipal association responsible for waste water treatment, the sewage system and flood control. The Emscher Association gained prominence from the late 1990s onwards as it is responsible for the construction of a new sewage system and the regeneration of the Emscher River, which has been used for more than a century as an open sewer for industrial and municipal waste water. The case demonstrates that infrastructure regionalism opens new avenues of research.

KEYWORDS:

• water governance
• metropolitan governance
• Ruhr region
• inter-municipal cooperation
• infrastructuring
• multi-city regionalism‌

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The figures are taken from https://www.rvr.ruhr (accessed on 6 February 2021).

2 It is common in Germany that rainwater and household wastewater are disposed of in the same system of pipes and treatment facilities. As heavy rainfall may cause an overload of the system, rainwater is increasingly disposed of in a separate system of rainwater retention basins, green roofs, infiltration trenches or rigoles.

3 See www.emscherkunst.de/en/.

4 See https://www.emscherkunst.de/kunstwerk/waste-water-fountain/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Bundesministerium für Forschung und Technologie [grant number 01LR1721A].